More Truth Revealed…

HUSBAND and I had been through an excruciating, six-week disclosure process. Our counselor had asked, point-blank, if HUSBAND had used porn…self-satisfied…during our marriage, and HUSBAND had responded that he had looked once or twice, but it “just didn’t do it for him.”

Our counselor had also asked us if we thought HUSBAND might be a sex addict…and we both had shunned that idea. The counselor indicated that he thought it was a possibility, and encouraged HUSBAND to take a screening, which he did, and he scored in the possibility range.

Now, this new information revealed by Son-2, changed several things for me.

First…another lie. ANOTHER LIE. After the deep revelations and Night From Hell that ended in sobs and disclosure and what I thought was everything, here was more. Additionally, porn. Porn. PORN? To what extent? Enough that my son had found it multiple times? AND…the possibility of sex addiction? In my mind, knowing how he’d responded on the screening, went from possibility to probability.

It sent me spinning into another gut-ripping state.

After I left Son-2’s room, I quietly found HUSBAND and suggested we go for a drive, knowing that the conversation we were going to have should not be had at home near our two children and parents. So we left on a drive.

HUSBAND spent the first thirty minutes spinning and circling and justifying and finally just started telling the truth about porn, the role it had played and what it lead to. Again, I was astounded at how long it had been present in our marriage, how long he had sought some kind of solace or refuge or satisfaction in this smut. How it was often easier to partake and satisfy this way, then drive into the intricacies of our marital relationship. How easily it transferred from the screen to the flesh with an affair partner with whom he lived a fantasy life.

It was a difficult night. It was a night that left the carefully, barely-taped-together-parts of my heart ripped back open and spilling out all over and it was hard to see how they could get back together again. Lies on lies on lies on lies. Loneliness on loneliness on loneliness of loneliness. Rejection on rejection on rejection on rejection. Through the years, all those nights, lying in bed, wondering why he didn’t want me now made sense, but it STUNG. My husband didn’t really have a low-libido like he hid behind. He had just handled things differently.

I wanted to know the sites and his routine, which he disclosed sadly…with shame… We returned to the house, and I could not bear to be near him. I quietly moved to one of our other bedrooms, where, during the night, HUSBAND came in and slept on the floor. Although I heard him, I did not acknowledge him, or invite him to join me on the bed. I was broken. Again.

I am so sorry. It’s not easy what you’re going through especially after all these years. My husband too was addicted to porn. Gay porn! Disgusting and vile. I put up with it for reasons beyond my control then, but one day I realized that it’s time. It’s time I give my self some respect and leave…
You can’t change him. You need to let go…

She can’t change me you are right. However, I can change. It’s not easy and I’m not flippant about it. My life is changed, my family is changed and my marriage is a marriage I had no idea was even possible. I have been porn sober for 19 months and I’m working towards 20, one day at a time.

please have a look on my post on sexual compulsivity. I know we might be debating semantics, but the new training in sex therapy, which I completed last year, does no longer use the word sex addiction. I actually work with people, moistly men, who say that are sex addicts, but it is more complicated. It becomes an obsessive compulsive behavior, which is not even enjoyed by the person engaging in it. Not many therapists are specialized in sextherapy. It is an intensive training in addition to what we are supposed to know (but do not). There is also increasingly more research available due to the media attention given to it.

Thanks so much. We are fortunate that our primary therapist has a Ph.D. is sexual disorders, and has developed some very effective treatment. We will be sharing some of our experiences over these next weeks. KUDOS to you for continuing your work in this difficult area, and helping so many people!

By focusing too much on the so-called addiction part, therapists might miss on what else is there and the causes of the behavior. Many men who have serial short-term “affairs” tend to use porn frequently, but not all porn “addicts” seek our real people. Those with long term affairs, do not recognize themselves as having sexual compulsive behavior.
Treatment for sexual compulsive behavior goes beyond CBT and requires a therapist aware of attachment issues.
The “affairs” of those with sexual compulsivity tend to be without attachment and emotion.
The therapy for betrayal and what it does to the spouse and kids….is a separate issue that needs work. For the later I do couple session, for the first issue, I do intensive individual therapy.

Ugh, my heart dropped reading this. At some point, you’d think the lies and deception would be too heavy a burden to cling to and he’d welcome the opportunity to be honest. I suppose self preservation is a hard instinct to over come.

After a lifestyle of dishonesty I honestly (haha) was not sure how to live transparently. I actually think the painfully process of these discoveries and revelations actually were the pathway I needed to heal. Unfortunately, I took my marriage and my wife to the very brink of destruction. To address the comment above that it is no longer considered addiction, I disagree, and I do know, and have experienced, that healing can happen through traditional addiction therapy. If you consider addiction as a bonding disorder, attaching to an object or destructive relationship – instead of another person or persons in healthy ways, it fits perfectly.

I’m sick for you after reading this – I had really hoped you and your husband had come to a place of honesty, but as I’m learning from the folks over at http://www.chumplady.com/ someone who can betray their spouse is incapable of honesty. What he’s doing to you is called trickle truth and with each revelation he rips you apart all over again.

How many times are you going to let him do this before you say ENOUGH? I know you’re a Christian, do you really think that this is what God wants for you and your children? Do you think that what you’re going through is what the biblical definition of a marriage is?

He has shown you over and over that he is completely incapable of being truthful with you, despite all the chances you’ve given him. At some point you have to decide how much hurt is too much.

I wish you peace, and grace, but most of all I wish that you find the strength to finally stand up for yourself and say NO MORE.

What a great question. I do not, not in any fiber of my being, believe that my faith requires/required me to stay with my husband. You said it perfectly when you asked ‘do you really think that this is what God wants for you and your children.’ NO WAY. And so you will see as the story unfolds, I believe. Thank you for your care, and for your words.

I am familiar with chumplady as well. Harsh, open and blunt, and a lot of anger. I understand it, the anger…it covers a lot of hurt.
Although I think that for many who betray more than once..the behavior is part of them…as it is a habit, I do not believe that ALL are not capable of change. It is a bumpy road with a lot of pain, and the betrayer has to do most of the work….not the betrayed…as I see most of the time.
As lying is a learnt behavior to avoid, “being punished” (and being vulnerable) being honest can also be learnt when someone is truly motivated. We are not born liars…we become liars…lying has become rewarding….when it is not rewarding anymore…there is no reason to go on. Unfortunately, the liar has to see and GET the hurt….this means the betrayer need to have a level of empathy. When the genuine remorse is not there….I agree, get out, the person does not deserve you!

Yes, it is harsh and blunt, and theres a LOT of anger. I think being betrayed by your spouse, being lied to, exposed to diseases, having money that should be going to your family instead spent on prostitutes or Craigs List hookups or vacations with the mistress is all behavior that deserves anger.

The reality is that the vast majority of people who cheat on their spouses have no desire whatsoever to change. They don’t think there is anything wrong with what they’ve done and their gratification of their wants comes ahead of anything and anyone else.

Wow. So many similarities and so many differences in our stories. My husband has a very high libido and tried desperately to manage his addiction, so the acting out was intermittent and there was plenty to go around when he was in a cycle, so no obvious burden on our marital sex life or our marriage (at least in a quantifiable way). I always felt like I was second to his career, because of course, I had no idea he was a workaholic AND a sexaholic. He hid the porn really well and it was never found. The label their behavior is given, in my opinion, has little to do with healing and in our experience, most therapists dealing with sex addiction (and most call it a compulsive disorder) deal with the underlying attachment and bonding issues, FOO, childhood wounds, co-dependent behaviors in the addict, and how the brain has been altered and how to fix it. Hard and consistent work and a positive attitude towards change has helped. I know how difficult it is to write out a story on a blog that has already happened. I did that for months. People want to believe it is now and they want to feel for us, when many of the feelings happened months ago. It’s a dilemma. Thanks for writing your story. Sex addiction is widespread. People just don’t realize it because it is mostly kept secret. Most of the guys in my husband’s group do not have blogs nor do their wives, and everything is a secret from their real world because A LOT of people do not understand and it is often ridiculed as just a lame excuse. The interesting thing about disclosure is, due to the nature of their addiction, it does not come out all at once and sometimes not all of it ever. It is excruciating to witness, be a part of, be tortured by, but it is part of this process. Once they have the sex addict diagnosis (or whatever you want to call it) they at least have a pathway to recovery, to healing. Bless you both. I know how difficult all of this is… living it, and writing it. ❤

My soon to be ex is a porn addict whose addiction was present long before I met him. His addiction is to the point where he is completely unable to maintain an erection with an actual person. He was reading porn about incest, and was exchanging masturbation pictures with strangers online. I found all of this on a flash drive. That’s when I said enough, and kicked him out.

I’m telling you this because porn addiction is nearly impossible to recover from. It takes incredible will to overcome, and based on everything you’ve said about your husband he doesn’t have that kind of strength.

It is wicked, and insidious and so PRESENT. As this has unfolded and I did my (of course) research…but it is like society’s dirty little secret. Does that not perpetuate the problem? The very thing we avoid is just quietly growing in every area of our lives, yet we are shamed into silence. I’m so glad to have found this powerful community of really courageous people.

There’s a small part of me that still hopes my husband has hit rock bottom and is seeking help for his porn addiction. Its the little piece of my heart that still loves him. But after all of the lies and the emotional and verbal abuse my son and I have gone through from him I know that to have him back in my life would destroy me. It would destroy my son and I can’t allow that to happen.

Well I am going to add my bit here because I think it will be relevant. I want to reiterate what Kat mentioned above and that is the most important issue for us. A pathway to healing.
After d day my husband changed instantly. He started to become the man he used to think he was. He did everything right. He saw three professional psychologists. No one diagnosed sex addiction. Fair enough. But I still felt that there was something missing and yet I could not work out what it was. There he is being the husband he should have been but I kept saying to him that it just is not enough. Then one day we were led to re think sex addiction. Actually I would like to stop calling it that because it has such a negative connotation. Anyway husband went through the criteria and realised that he fitted in quite well. This was a huge turning point and it came many months after d day…more than 18 months later I think. Because I knew there was something missing but I don’t know what I don’t know but the day it was discovered that there is this pathway to healing was certainly the answer I was seeking. I also knew from the relief I could feel from husband that he was finally landing at a place where he felt he needed to be. From that time our healing has taken a new direction and we both feel it is the right one.
He is not just doing the sexaholic twelve steps. He is looking into his life’s values. Really looking into them and really taking the time to understand that how he viewed the world as a child and adolescent was not healthy. He is now able to understand what led him to think his self worth was tied into how women viewed him. He was finally able to mature his thinking and understand all of his past behaviours.
So even though he has no porn, prostitutes or masturbation issues he still used women to make himself feel better.
If anything sexual in life leads you to lie or cheat or not live life how you think it should be then you have a problem and it needs working on.
Xxxx

This is going to be long so excuse me. In reading your blog, and Kats blog, and the woman with the need for chlorine it appears that she was subjected to verbal abuse which I do not read in your blogs. That means there were other issues than just sex addiction going on with her husband.

In my job I ran across so many people who were making seriously bad decisions about themselves. Some were job-related, health related, drugs and alcohol related, and marriage related. It gradually became apparent that there was an underlying chronic depression running through their lives. They had no sense of self in order to see that was the issue.

There has been, at some point in my reading, an article about gradations of depression, from 1 to 10 . One being suicidal and 10 being euphoria. Most people with a healthy self-esteem live someplace around seven or eight. An engagement, a trip, a new baby, will give you a sense of euphoria but it is short term. Most people who are a seven or eight panic if their mood dips to four or five. It is an uncomfortable emotion. People who are chronically depressed routinely live at three ot four or five. If they find something that gets them out of that depression they will use it…….alcohol which is self-defeating, drugs which are also self-defeating and sex which in the long run ruins so many lives. For you the husband, did you get a sense of euphoria from planning and executing your affairs? Did sneaking about writing to your long ago girl friend give you a high that you could not find in your daily life? This is the serious damage that affairs do. They promise Nirvana. If you had left your wife you would have waked up next to your lover at some point and realized there was absolutely nothing different in your life. You would probably still be depressed and you would have thrown away a family.

I understand where the poster comes from with questions about the ability to get past sex addiction. I do know the statistics a pretty rough but there are people who manage. How have you managed?

These are EXCELLENT observations and questions. I so often contemplate where HUSBAND would be had we divorced without delving deep…and where I would be…and all I can say with certainty is that today is today, and we are living in the present while trying to honestly understand the past. Thanks for your thoughts!

At the point where my husband and I were still communicating he acknowleged that he was depressed and had been for most of his adult life. I know that his drug of choice was pornography and online sex. I’m a psychiatric nurse and I understand what addiction is and the underlying psychiatric issues that accompany addictive behavior. And the part of me that loves the man I thought he was when we got married hopes that he will get the help he needs.

But the verbal and emotional abuse that he subjected my son and I to, whatever the underlying cause, is not something that I can live with or allow my son to be exposed to any longer. I cannot allow someone to jeopardize my emotional well being or my physical health. My son is high functioning autistic and as a mother I have to place his and my well being ahead of everything else. Its a matter of self preservation on my part, and of protecting my child.

Finding out about his porn addiction and his cheating was the last in a long list of behaviors from him that finally made me realize that I could not continue to be married to him. To do so would mean sacrificing myself and my son and that is too high a price for me to pay. He is an adult and needs to take responsibility for himself. I can’t save him. I can’t fix him. Thats his job, not mine.

You are so amazing to have tried for so long. You are 100% right…you could NOT stay in an abusive, destructive situation. Absolutely not…for your son…or for you.I wish you only healing and peace…and some joy, too. HUGS.

Hey saving! You’re welcome! It doesn’t seem to be a formal thing, it seems to be a thing we bloggers pass on to each other, to “honor”, and to make other people notice great bloggers. (It “opens up” the blog circles of readers a bit, ie: The person who nominated me, nominated several other interesting blogs, which I’m now curious to check out☺)… so you could say it’s an honor plus free “advertising” from blogger to blogger. I think it is great and was very happy. 😃 If you want to see how to do a post like that, you can look at my post and just “do the same” (and name your own candidates, etc). Hugs! 💜

Mrs. Pool, you needed to get out. Yours was a dangerous marriage.
Any time people begin to discuss addictions everyone holds their breath. I hope Saving that your husband’s recovery is permanent.
I think chronic low grade depression is much more prevalent in men than most people realize. My husband can give into melancholia easily. His sister told me she felt a strain of it ran through their family. I think only one sibling escaped. My role in the family has always been to be Miss Sunshine. Since I have a pretty good disposition I can usually do it. I think mental health personnel should consider it much like diabetes. It is probably inherited and can be triggered by erratic parenting.
When you talk about your husband and porn it saddens me. The younger a person begins the addictive behavior the harder it is to give up. He literally has to retrain his brain. I suggest EMDR therapy. Anyone who brings FOO issues into adulthood have encapsulated them so they don’t have to think about them. The problem is they are still there running the show.

I agree…DatingPool did the right thing. For me, it is essential that I feel safe, and there is no way I could have felt safe with a husband who verbally and emotionally abused me (after discovery). The depression link is really interesting, and something we will consider. Thank you, LetGo. HUGS.

It’s like taking a knife and stabbing it through your heart one more time. It disturbs me how easily and convincingly he’s been able to lie to your counsellor. I remember telling my husband that if he was just going to tell our counsellor fiction, then we were wasting both our time and money. I’m so sorry you have to endure this repeated learning of new damaging information. Sending you love and strength. SWxo

Damyanti Biswas is an author, blogger, animal-lover, spiritualist. Her work is represented by Ed Wilson from the Johnson & Alcock agency. When not pottering about with her plants or her aquariums, you can find her nose deep in a book, or baking up a storm.